Electronic communications, such as electronic mail messages and instant messages, are increasingly being used for both business and personal uses. Electronic communications have many advantages over nonelectronic communications, such as postal mail. These advantages include low cost, rapid delivery, ease of storage, and so on. Because of these advantages, electronic communications have resulted in many benefits including increased worker productivity, more informed decision making, and so on. These benefits, however, are currently being limited because of the vast number of unwanted electronic communications, also known as “junk mail” or “spam,” that are being sent via the Internet.
Because of the advantages of low cost and rapid delivery, many organizations use electronic communications to advertise by sending electronic communications that most recipients do not want to receive. For example, a mortgage company may purchase a list of electronic mail addresses and send an electronic mail message containing an advertisement for the mortgage company to each electronic mail address. Since the cost of sending each electronic mail message is extremely small, an organization can cost effectively send thousands and even millions of electronic mail messages containing their advertisements. Even if only a small fraction of a percent of the recipients respond to the advertisement, the benefits to the organization may outweigh the small cost of sending the electronic mail messages.
Because many organizations send advertisements via electronic mail messages, it is not uncommon for a person to receive many unwanted electronic mail messages a day. People receiving such unwanted electronic mail messages typically find them annoying. Indeed, their productivity can decrease significantly as they separate the unwanted from the wanted electronic mail messages. Unwanted electronic mail messages may also cause a person's inbox to become full and may make it difficult to locate and identify wanted electronic mail messages.
Various techniques have been developed to combat unwanted electronic mail messages. For example, some electronic mail systems allow a user to create a black list of unwanted electronic mail senders. When an electronic mail message is received from a sender on the black list, the electronic mail system may automatically discard the unwanted electronic mail message or may automatically store the unwanted electronic mail message in a special folder. When an unwanted mail message is received from a sender who is not currently on the black list, the recipient can indicate to add that sender to the black list. As another example, some electronic mail systems may allow the recipient to specify a white list of allowed senders. If an electronic mail message is received from a sender who is not on the white list, then the electronic mail system may automatically discard or otherwise specially handle such an electronic mail message.
Instant messaging systems also have problems with unwanted instant message requests that, in some respects, could be more problematic than the problems associated with unwanted electronic mail. In particular, because instant messaging to be effective requires that a person's attention will be directed to an instant message as it is received, when an unwanted instant message request is received, that person's attention is unnecessarily distracted by an unwanted instant message request. The unwanted instant message request may be a request to obtain presence information of the recipient, to invite the recipient to join in an instant messaging session with the sender of the request, and so on. Since electronic mail systems do not require such attention of the recipient, unwanted messages can present more problems to instant messaging systems than to electronic mail systems.
The problems resulting from unwanted instant message requests have not been particularly significant because instant messaging systems have traditionally been restricted to a single domain. Such instant messaging systems could prohibit instant message requests from outside the domain and could control unwanted instant message requests from originating within the domain. For example, if the domain comprises the computer systems of a company, then the management of the company could take action against an employee who sends unwanted instant message requests.
It is anticipated, however, that inter-domain instant messaging will increase. As a result, instant messaging users will likely receive unwanted instant message requests from outside their domain. It would be desirable to have a way to identify whether communications, such as instant message requests and electronic mail messages, sent from other domains are likely to be unwanted by the recipient.